May/June, 2001

Diaspora

HEALTH

Easing Stress Heals the Heart

Beat back heart-attack-causing stress and anger with meditation, breath control and biofeedback training at Dr. Bhat's Cybernetix Institute

By Gayatri Rajan, California

I am sitting in front of a computer monitor, wired into it through sensors taped to my head and chest. On the screen are undulating graphs and lines that rise and fall in the shapes of smoothly rolling hills and valleys--my heart rate, breathing, etc., recorded and displayed in real time. The gentle attendant at my side asks me to think of the most irritating, exasperating moment I can remember. I do, and in an instant the hills and valleys shoot up and down into sharp pinnacles and deep ravines. Alarming!

I am asked to breathe with my diaphragm, with the muscle just below my rib cage, and call to mind a harmonious, loving image. Gradually the steep angles smooth out and slow down, and the rolling rhythm resumes. This is how a tense, pre-occupied overachiever begins to monitor his or her thoughts and emotions. There's no room for rationalizing--it's right there on the screen.

I am at Cybernetix Medical Institute, the Concord, California, stress and heart clinic of Dr. K. Naras Bhat and his wife, Kusum. Dr. Bhat came to the US from India in 1970. He received his medical education at Banaras University and went on to study internal medicine at Louisiana State University and immunology at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in San Diego, California. For the next ten years of his career, Dr. Bhat worked in general medicine and allergy treatment and was against the Eastern healing traditions of his homeland. Slowly his views changed when he realized that only about ten percent of his patients were being cured through allopathy.

From allopathic medicine, Dr. Bhat shifted into the field of stress management and the scientifically proven corollary, heart disease. He evolved, as he went, a system of teaching people how to heal themselves. He called it the Heart Saver

Save your heart: Bhat uses techniques drawn from yoga and meditation to help his patients uproot stress and anger, greatly improving their recovery from heart disease

Program. It uses a unique synthesis of ancient wisdom and high-tech monitoring. His program draws from ancient Vedic wisdom, metaphysics, yoga, the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, and uses modern biofeedback devices. The objective is to teach people under chronic stress to unlearn anger and negative attitudes and thereby prevent, or even reverse, heart conditions and other diseases.

In Dr. Bhat's book, How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease and Cancer, he says, "Your heart only knows how to care and love. Your brain may rationalize and hate. But all you have to do to find your heartfelt feelings is just close your eyes, focus on the area of your heart, and ask your heart what your heartfelt feelings are. Your heart will always say it loves the person. Resonating these heartfelt feelings with the brain heals you." On the other hand, he told me, "erratic heart rate variability is a sign of a Ôbrittle' heart, and we know scientifically this is an ominous premonition of sudden death. Anger makes the heart rate variability erratic. Caring love makes it smooth and regular."

His Heart Saver Program is a five-point formula to reverse heart disease: uprooting anger; meditation and imagery; self-disclosure and connectedness; balance of rest and activity; and mindful eating. The program is implemented in conjunction with a patient's cardiologist and family physician, while focusing on emotion and stress-control to reduce the free radical damage to the coronary arteries.

The Heart Saver Program has two models: a five-day crash course or a six-week program of weekly two-hour sessions. In either case, the sequence is the same. The first session is called an "intake visit," in which patients become familiar with the treatments to follow. During this meeting, a video camera is focused on the patient to objectively record spoken responses and body language. Sensors record the physiological occurrences that are taking place. In most cases, patients should be accompanied by their spouse or "significant other," because many of the issues patients react to have to do with their relationships. Marriage counseling plays a large part in the treatment at this stage. The patients are encouraged to make the changes themselves. The practitioners call it "biofeedback training," but it is as much counseling as mechanical evaluation. The message the clinic puts across in its relationship counseling is that people are "different," not necessarily "difficult."

Patients involved in biofeedback training, also called cybernetics, watch their life functions, such as respiration, brain waves, heart rate variation, muscle tension, hand temperature and emotional sweating on a computer screen. They watch in realtime the positive effects of using heartfelt resonant imaging, meditation and imagery, breathing, muscle relaxation and self-disclosure. They then begin to learn to relieve stress and heal the heart--discovering by themselves what works for them.

Dr. Bhat's wife, Kusum, took me though a sample session at the clinic, explaining what was being done and the significance of each feature. Kusum Bhat received her BS degree in India and then went on to receive a PhD in behavioral medicine and clinical psychology at the American School of Professional Psychology, Corta Madera, California. She trains the therapists who conduct the biofeedback sessions.

At the second session, the videotape of the first visit is reviewed by the therapist and the patient. This will be their first turning point. Often the therapist injects humor to lighten the drama and intensity of self revelation as people watch themselves as an objective observer--perhaps for the first time.

Kusum explained that the patient has to actually go into the state of meditation to make the desired changes in attitude and conduct. The patient has to experience the changes brought about by the various techniques, and then will then understand the importance of implementing them.

Additionally, lifestyle changes of exercise and diet, along with vitamin supplements, especially anti-oxidants which fight disease-causing free radicals, are recommended. The clinic places great emphasis on the importance of a vegetarian, starch-based, low-fat, low-sugar diet in restoring and maintaining health.

Naras Bhat conducts numerous cost-free educational programs for the public. This he considers to be his seva, his selfless service to humanity. He also teaches at a university and elsewhere. He is currently working on a remote system of biofeedback whereby a patient can, through connecting to a computer's serial port, go through these same procedures on the Internet. Dr. Bhat's motto is "live with your heart in mind."